"What'll pass?" she said, fighting hard to look at him. Doubtless he had good reason to prevent her laying eyes on him, which was all the more reason to defy the edict. If she could just distract him for a few moments, perhaps he'd drop his guard long enough for her to get one good look at him. "What'll pass?" she asked him again.
"The shock."
"Why should I be shocked?"
"Because you thought I was dead and gone." "Why would I think that?"
"Don't try this."
"Try what?"
"This stupid game you're playing."
"What game?"
"I said stop it!" As he yelled, she looked at him, and for perhaps the length of two heartbeats his irritation made him careless, and she had plain sight of him.
It was long enough to see why he'd kept her from looking at him. He was in transition, his skin and sinew drooping around him, gangrenous and fetid. Enough of his flesh remained for her to recognize his face. The post-simian brow, the wide nose, the jutting jaw: All had been Raul's, before Kissoon had stolen them.
Jesus... she heard Raul say, look away. Forpity's sake, look away... As it was, she had little chance. She'd no sooner registered the sight than Kissoon became aware of her scrutiny, and his will, sharp as a blow, slapped her sight aside. Tears of pain sprang into her eyes.
"You're too curious for your own good," Kissoon said.
"You're getting very vain in your old age," she replied, wiping the tears off her cheeks.
"Old? Me? No. I'll be new forever. You, on the other hand, look like shit. Were your travels worth it?"
"What do you know about my travels?" "Just because I've been out of sight doesn't mean I've been out of touch," Kissoon replied. "I've been watching the world very closely. And I've reports of you from a lot of grubby little corners. What were you looking for? Fletcher?"
"No."
"He's gone, Tesia. So's the iaff. That part of things is er. It was a simpler age, so I suppose you felt at home there, but it's over and done with."
"And what follows?" Tesia said.
"I think you know." Tesia said nothing. "Are you too afraid to say it?"
"lad, you meant'
"There. You knew all along."
"Haven't you seen enough of them?" Tesla said. "We've seen more than most, you and 1. Yet we've seen nothing. Nothing at all." There was excitement in his voice. "they will change the world out of all recognition." "And you want that?"
"Don't you?" Kissoon said. She'd forgotten how strangely persuasive he could be; how well he comprehended the ambiguities in her heart. "This chaos is no good, Tesla. Everything severed. Everything broken. The world needs to be put back together again." Like all great liars, there was enough truth in what he said to make it sound perfectly plausible.
"Unfortunately, the species can't heal itself without help," he went on.
"But not to worry. Help's on its way."
"And when it comes?"
"I told you. It'll change things out of all recognition."
"But you-"
"What about me?"
"What will it do for you?"
"Oh-that."
"Yes, that."
"It'll make me king of the hill, of course." "Plus ga change."
"And I'll have the Art." Ah, the Art! Sooner or later it always came back to that. "I'll live in one immortal day-"
"Sounds lovely. And what about the rest of us?"
"The lad'Il make theirjudgments. You'll abide by them. Simple as that. I think they have quite an appetite for the feminine. Ten years ago, they probably would have kept you for breeding. Now, of course, you'd be better used for fertilizer." He laughed. "Don't worry, I'll make sure you don't go to waste." She felt something move against her ankle, and looked down. There was a Lix there, five or six times larger than any of those she'd seen here previously. It curled around her foot, raising its head as it did so. Its open mouth was lined with tiny scarlet teeth, row upon row of them, receding down its throat.
"Wait@' she said.
"No time," Kissoon said. "Maybe I'll see you in the past, tomorrow. Maybe I'll find you in the Loop and we'll talk about how you died today."
The Lix was climbing her leg, its hold on her already tightening.
She screamed and stumbled backwards, her legs caught in the creature's coils. There was a moment when she teetered, then she fell, fell hard, the debris biting into her back. For a moment the room went white, and if she'd not had Raul yelling in her head, telling her to Hold on, hold on, she'd certainly have lost consciousness.
When the whiteness receded, she was looking towards the hearth. The Lix that had ventured there before her dialogue with Kissoon had done with warming themselves, and had turned their heads in her direction. Now they came, in a squirming river.
She tried to sit up, but their monstrous sibling had wound itself around her, incapacitating her. Her only hope was Phoebe. She craned her head round, looking for the woman, yelling her name as she did so. It was a lost cause. The room was empty, but for Kissoon and her devourers.
She looked back towards the hearth, and as if this weren't nightmare enough, realized what the Lix had been doing there. Not warming themselves at all, but feeding. What she'd taken to be branches scattered around the fire were human bones, and the stone amidst the embers a skull. Erwin Toothaker hadn't left home after all, except as smoke.
She let out a sob of horror. Then the Lix were upon her.
TWELVE
"Is she alive?"
Erwin went down onto his haunches beside the woman sprawled on his doorstep. Her brow was bleeding, and there was a trail of puke running from her mouth, but she was still breathing.
"She's alive," he said. "Her name's Phoebe Cobb."
The front door stood open. The air from out of the house smelled like shit and meat. Though Erwin had little to lose in his present condition, he was as scared as he'd ever been in life. He glanced back at the trio that had accompanied him here-Nordhoff, Dolan, and Dickerson-and saw unease on their faces too.
"He can't do anything to us, right?" Erwin said. "Not now."
Nordhoff shrugged. "Who the hell knows?" he said.
"What if he can see us?" Dickerson replied.
"We're never going to find out if we stay here," Dolan said impatiently and, stepping over Phoebe Cobb, he entered.
Erwin suddenly felt proprietorial. This was still his house: If anyone was going to lead the way, it should be him.
"Wait," he said to Dolan, and hurried after him down the hallway.
The Lix were not interested in her flesh (perhaps it was too leathery after so many years in the sun). they sought out her mouth and her nostrils, they went to her ears and eyes, so as to gain access to the tender stuff inside her.
She thrashed and rolled, her mouth sealed against their probing and pushing, but her nose was stopped with them now, and in a few seconds she would be out of breath. As soon as she parted her lips they would enter into her, and that would be the end.
Tesla "Not now."
It's over, Tesla.
"No.
I want you to know "No, I said, no!"
She heard him keen in her head; the sound not quite human.
"Don't give up," she told him. "It's not... over... yet." He stifled his moans, but she felt his terror in her marrow, as though at the last he was not merely sharing her mind but her body too.
And this was the last, despite her protestations. She had to draw breath: now, or else never. Though the Lix were at her lips, waiting, she had no choice. She opened her mouth, teeth clenched, drawing air between the gaps. ut w re breath could go, so could the finest of the Lix. She felt them sliding between the cracks, under her tongue and down her throat.
Her system revolted. She started to gag, and the reflex bettered her will. Her teeth parted. It was all the Lix needed. they were in her mouth in a moment, filling it up. She bit down on them, tasting their shit and rot, and spitting out what she could. But for every one she expelled, there were two hungry to eat her out from the inside, and willing to risk her teeth to do so.
Gagging, spitting, and thrashing she fought with every ounce of power in her, but the battle was beyond winning. Her throat was choked, her nostrils blocked, her body creaking in the coils of the giant Lix. At the last, hanging on the slivers of consciousness, she thought she heard Raul say: Listen.
She listened. There were voices coming from somewhere in the room.
"Christ Almighty!" one of them said.
"Look there! In the fire!"
Then a cry of anguish, and at the sound she used her last top of energy to turn her head in its direction. Death was almost on her, and her eyes-which had witnessed so many strangenesses in their time, but had always been wedded to the real-were now in extremis, wise to subtle presences. Four of them-all men, all aghast-approaching from the door.
One went to the fire. Two lingered a couple of yards from her. The fourth and oldest, God bless him, went down on his knees beside her, and reached to touch her face. No doubt he intended to soothe her passage from life to death, but his phantom touch did more than that. At his touch she felt the Lix writhe upon her face like cutworms, then soften and liquefy and pour off down her cheeks and neck. Down her throat too, as though their dissolution was contagious. A look of astonishment crossed her liberator's face, but he plainly understood in a moment what power he possessed, because as soon as she drew a breath, he then turned his attention to the Lix that had her in its coils. She raised her head off the ground in time to see the creature rising off her body like a startled cobra, spitting a warning. The phantom was unmoved. He reached out and ran his hand over the Lix's head, almost as though he were stroking it. A shudder passed through its glossy length, and its head began to droop, its filthy anatomy collapsing on itself. The lower jaw softened and ran like molasses; the upper followed moments later, its collapse initiating the dissolution of the beast's entire length. She pulled herself free of its sticky grasp, and as she turned over her system revolted and she puked up the filth that had found its way down her throat. When she looked up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the phantoms were already indistinct, and growing more so as she retreated from their condition.
She had moments, she knew, to make sense of this.
"Name yourselves."
The old man's voice, when it came, was feather-light. "Hubert Nordhoff," he said, "and him'@he pointed to the man at the hearth-"he's Erwin Toothaker."
She was looking in Erwin's direction when she heard another voice: this from behind her.
"When did you learn to raise spirits?"
She'd forgotten Kissoon, in the rush of deliverance. But he hadn't forgotten her. When she looked round at him, he was too astonished by what he'd seen to keep her gaze at bay, and she had a second opportunity to study him in the midst of transformation. He was more naked than he'd been minutes before; much more. All resemblance to Raul had disappeared. In fact, there was barely anything left that was human. The vague shape of a head, formed from a roiling darkness; the last remnants of a ribcage, and a few fragments of leg and arm bones; that was all. The rest-the sinew, the nerves, the veins and the blood that had pulsed in them-had corrupted away.
I think... maybe he's afraid of you, Raul said, his tone astonished. She dared not believe it. Not Kissoon. He was too crazy to be afraid. Look at him, Raul told her. "What am I supposed to be seeing?" Look past the particulars. As she looked, Kissoon spoke again. "You played with me," he said, his tone almost admiring. "You endured the Lix, to prove they were nothing to you."
"You've got the general idea," she said, still trying to do as Raul had instructed, and see what he was so eager she saw.
"Where did you learn to raise spirits?" Kissoon wanted to know.
"Detroit," she said.
"Are you mocking me?"
"No. I learned to raise spirits in the Motor City. Something wrong with that?"
As she spoke, the last portions of Kissoon's usurped anatomy fell away, and with their passing she glimpsed what Raul had already seen. In the center of Kissoon's shadowself, there was another form, glimmering remotely. A spiral, receding from her like a tunnel, as its curves tightened. And at the far end, where her gaze was inexorably drawn, something glittering.
"You don't know what you've done," Kissoon murmured.
His voice shook her from her scrutiny, and she was glad of it. The spiral had claimed her gaze with no little authority. What Kissoon meant by the remark (was he warning her about raising spirits or staring into spirals?) she didn't know; nor was this any time to quiz him. As long as he believed she was a woman who could raise spirits, and might do him harm while he was vulnerable, she might yet escape this room alive.
"Take care-" Kissoon was saying.
"Why's that?" she said, glancing back towards the door. It was probably six, perhaps seven, strides away. If she was to preserve the illusion of authority, she would have to exit without falling flat on her face, which would be a challenge given her trembling limbs.
"If you make any assault upon me now"-he is vulnerable, she thought-"I will have every soul in this city slaughtered. Even for the tiniest harm you do me." So this was the way power treated with power. It was a lesson she might profit from if she had occasion to play bluff with him again.
She didn't reply, however, but pretended to chew the deal over.
"You know I can do it," Kissoon said.
This was true. She didn't doubt him capable of any atrocity. But suppose this was a bluff of his own? Suppose he was so susceptible in his present condition that she might reach into the dark spiral at his core right now, and squeeze the life from him? Don't even think it, Raul said.
Wisdom, no doubt. But oh, she was sorely tempted to try Let's get out while we can, Raul was saying. Tesla? Are you listening to me?
"Yes... " she replied reluctantly. There would never be another opportunity like this, she knew. But Raul's defensive instincts were right. Get out now, and live to fight another day.